The Prime Minister Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) is not a pro-farmer scheme as it is benefitting the insurance companies more than the farmers, alleged the farmers in a meeting in Bargarh on Friday.
Presided over by District Collector Monisha Banerjee, the meeting was attended by representatives of Reliance Insurance Company and various farmers associations.
The farmers' representatives complained that Reliance Insurance Company has been cheating the farmers. A total of 1, 69, 872 farmers have insured for 1,95,250 hectares of land. Out of them, 23,000 application papers have been returned as incorrect. The farmer representatives said that the insurance company is taking such steps after seeing the low rainfall this time.
When Collector Banerjee asked the representatives of the insurance company, they could not give any satisfactory answer. As a result, she directed the insurance company to accept those applications within the next 10 days. If the application documents are not correct, it was suggested to talk to the Additional District Collector to sort it out.
In the last kharif season, Bhubaneswarpur panchayat of Paikmal block was considered eligible for insurance compensation, but the farmers there have not received the compensation amount yet, the Collector was appraised. Additional District Collector Mirdha Toppo, Sub Collector Lalat Kumar Luha, Padampur Sub Collector Sadakar Kumbhar, LDM Maheshwar Sahu, District Chief Agriculture Officer Amiya Sahu, Sonalika Sahu, Truptikanta Sethi, Reliance Insurance Company CRM Rakesh Ranjan, District Manager Rajesh Mishra, Rajborasambar Farmers Association’s Ashok Sahu, Rohit Pradhan, Panchanan Sahu, Arvind Panda, Gajapati Sahu, Lingaraj Pradhan, Shaheed Madho Singh Regional Farmers Association's Prabhat Sahu, Barapahad Farmers Association's Ishant Bhoi, Thabira Pradhan and Ramesh Mahapatra were present.